1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control apparatus that controls printing by scanning an image on printed paper and determining its print quality, and a control method that controls the print control apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in printing and binding systems including print-on-demand (POD) machines and the like, the quality of an image on printed paper is recognized (print quality inspection (hereinafter, referred to as “inspection”)), and, if it is determined that the quality is not a desired quality, the printing is temporarily stopped (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-42601, for example).
When it is determined in the inspection that a predetermined criterion is not satisfied, and the printing process is stopped, downtime occurs during that time and productivity becomes poor even if the printing process can be resumed later.
Furthermore, even in a configuration in which, in order to improve the productivity, the printing process is continued by outputting to another printing unit image data printed on paper whose print quality is determined not to satisfy a predetermined criterion, if it is frequently determined that the predetermined criterion is not satisfied, a problem occurs in which paper is wasted.
Furthermore, as one of factors that lead to the determination that a predetermined criterion in inspection is not satisfied, there is an occurrence in which dust is scanned because inspection is performed with dust being present on paper, but it seems that the frequency of such an occurrence is only a few percent or less.
Meanwhile, in POD machines, it is common to repeatedly print original image data on a plurality of sets of paper. At that time, there may be a case in which, due to the original image data, the print quality is frequently determined not to satisfy a predetermined criterion in the same pages. Furthermore, there may be a case in which, due to the printer, the print quality is successively determined not to satisfy a predetermined criterion in successive pages. It seems that the frequency of such determination is sufficiently larger than that of the above-described case where dust is scanned. If the frequency of determination that a predetermined criterion is not satisfied increases when performing printing of a plurality of sets, sets of paper include pages whose print quality is determined not to satisfy a predetermined criterion, that is, include defective pages, which leads to problems in which productivity becomes poor and paper resources are wasted.